Thursday, March 15, 2012

Training Teachers to Give Homework

I found this article in the Indy Star and offered the following comment:

Improvements in teacher education are welcome, however, I'd like to point to one area of teacher education that I believe has been sorely overlooked, and that is homework-giving. Most people do not know this, but, despite the fact that homework is weighted heavily into a child's grade, to the best of my knowledge, schools of education do not have courses in how to give homework. I'm a psychologist. If you come to me for either therapy or psychological testing, you can rest assured that I had courses in these topics when I went to graduate school. Yet, teachers do not have courses in homework. At the least, I believe schools of education should provide all teachers with one course called "Homework" in which they review the history, the theory, the research, and the practice of homework-giving. That's the least parents should expect and demand if they are going to allow teachers to create assignments for the home.